Wasn’t it only last week that Lena Dunham was the Internet’s favorite body-positive darling? When she calmly responded to a television critic who objected to the presence of her insufficiently titillating body, she was lauded in a hundred feminist think pieces championing her rejection of television’s no-thigh policy. But apparently all that good will was shot when she had the audacity to have the bags under her eyes digitally removed. The horror!
After Dunham’s rather pretty Vogue spread was published on Wednesday, Jezebel posted a $10,000 bounty for the release of the unretouched photos. Was it because they didn’t believe she could look that glam? Of course not! Was it because they thought she’d look heavier in the originals? Certainly no! Was it because Dunham haters would flock to Jezebel in order to see unflattering images? Never! See, Jezebel was just trying to attack the harsh beauty standards propagated by the fashion industry and promote body acceptance. Clearly, because nothing screams “love yourself!” like pointing tiny arrows at the “flaws” in a woman’s face and figure. Continue reading “Leave Lena Dunham Alone!”
Nothing sets the feminist Internet abuzz quite like sexism presented in a bulleted list. Whether it be the Craigslist “worthy gentleman” with his fondness for misplaced quotation marks, the New Jersey surgeon who went to five—count them five—universities, or the newest entry, the racist, sexist gem known as “Sleepless in Austin,” these troglodytes are comic gold. We make fun. They go away. And everyone is happy. Because we assume they are merely an aberration or an unfortunate throwback to the days when people thought reading made women infertile. But these entitled men with their laundry lists of physical requirements keep popping up because we’ve raised a generation of men who believe that it’s totally acceptable for a man to dictate how a woman should look. Sure, most men have a bit more self-awareness and empathy than this unfortunate Austinite. But they’ll still tell their girlfriends exactly how much pubic hair they’re allowed to have. So “Sleepless in Austin” isn’t a joke. He’s like 75% of the unmarried men in New York City.
Humans, both male and female, have always had physical preferences, but heterosexual young men suddenly feel that it’s socially acceptable to voice these predilections to the women lying naked beside them. Although I‘m normally opposed to blaming every 21st-century ill on Internet porn, I’m making an exception in this case. Because porn, and media saturation in general, is clearly a big part of this problem. When a young man spends countless hours a day directing one nondescript girl after another to perform at his command, it shouldn’t be surprising that he considers it reasonable to tell his girlfriend that her upper arms are flabby. When 99% of the women he encounters in the media have been curated to meet his specifications, why wouldn’t he expect his girlfriend to follow suit?
Single? You may have never guessed that the answer to finding a husband is simple: just cover those skanky knees of yours because if there’s one thing men hate, it’s exposed joints. Or so says Lauren Shields, erstwhile blogger and soon-to-be-author of The Modesty Experiment—the latest in the subgenre of experimental memoir (i.e., the bastard child of Ryan Seacrest and Elizabeth Wurtzel). The Modesty Experiment is a rather bland title, so I’m hoping it includes a peppier subtitle like, “Sluts die alone!” or “Love your body by pretending it doesn’t exist!” Both would be fitting because Shields appears to believe that women’s body issues can all be solved if women just pretend they don’t have bodies. Who knew it was that simple! I guess we can all get rid of our therapists now and spend all that saved money on cardigans! In order to achieve this liberation, women simply need to follow an extremely labor intensive and time consuming dress code.
Lena Dunham has been called an exhibitionist, which is probably true, but what do critics mean with this label? If frequently appearing nude on camera makes you an exhibitionist, then most actresses, models, and a lot of sexting teenagers would be considered deviants. What most commentators probably mean is that she enjoys revealing her “imperfect” female body, throwing it in the audience’s face in a way that seems jarring not because of the nudity itself but because of the “excess,” unstylized flesh. Additionally, she is using her own body as a tool. No middle-aged director is forcing her to take off her top. She is choosing nudity, which somehow makes the sight of her naked flesh seem raw and unsettling. One of the more interesting details that emerged in the media cacophony surrounding this show was a tidbit about Dunham’s on-screen fashion: she tries Hannah’s clothing on with Spanx and then removes the Spanx so that everything fits just slightly off. Sex and the City—the show which is like the tacky mother that influenced Girls yet which Girls defines itself against—used the naked, and excessively fashioned, female body to delineate character, but the characters were always dressed or undressed to appear as sexually attractive as possible. Girls is working in the opposite direction, making the bodies seem more naked than nude. Consequently, the show is much, much naughtier.
This would not be a novel phenomenon if we were discussing Culture with a capital CULTURE. Over the past forty years, countless female visual and performance artists have made nudity one of the oldest feminist tools in the oldest vagina-shaped toolbox. In response to the hoary artistic tradition in which the nude female body was rendered passive, contained, and, consequently, depersonalized by the male artist, female artists like Karen Finley and Annie Sprinkle (with many more before them) began reclaiming their bodies as material bodies—bodies that shit, piss, bleed, and fuck. Cindy Sherman, who currently has an extensive retrospective at MOMA, seems tamer than some of this shock-value feminist art, but she managed to use her body as a subversive and multifaceted tool. Like Dunham, Sherman is her own model, photographer, and costumer, often occupying the position of both the male artist and the female subject. In her frighteningly sad aging socialite series as well as her centerfold and grotesque works, Sherman has also, like Dunham, used her own body to call attention to the unavoidable materiality of the body. Continue reading “Getting Physical”
